Pale Eyes, Pale Words
by broadwaybear
Summary: "If I'm Jack, who are you?" "Are you sure you're Jack?" "Excuse me?" "Would you jump over a candle stick?" "But YOU said- You know what? Nevermind. Can I go?" "Of course. They keep caged birds, not me." The Pale eyes see nothing, but pale words mean less.


Pale Eyes, Pale Words

It was raining for the first time in weeks. The parched ground drank the cool water until it was so saturated the earth was no more than mud beneath the grass. Gutters overflowed and the same water fell in sheets from steep, shingled roofs. Water drains filled and backed up into roads, flooding everything with the rain water. No one was outside. And even if they had been they wouldn't have been able to see the streak of red and black that fell from the sky at a dangerously fast velocity through the gray wall of rain.

Robin hit the black top and lost consciousness for a moment. The freezing rain woke him quickly. He was soaked to he bone. His head hurt, but he couldn't remember why or how he had gotten where he was or even where there was. He attempted to groan and move, to check himself for injuries, but soon discovered that the act of breathing was almost to much to bear. He tried to come to grips with the pain, to sort one type of hurt from another -the important from the superficial- as Batman had taught him, but his head felt thick and fuzzy and it was so _hard_ to concentrate.

He was still trying to rouse himself when something small pressed down firmly against his chest, not hurting him, but forcing him to lie still. A feeling of warmth and comfort began to overcome the pain.

"_It is all right, Jack_." A calm, soothing voice told him and he could not tell if the voice spoke aloud or only in his mind. The rain was so loud. "_You are safe. Sleep now."_

He knew he should fight the influence, everything he had ever learned told him this whole thing was suspicious and dangerous, but he hurt so much and the voice was so soothing. And he felt so warm...

Robin took a deep, restful breath and tried to hold onto the dream a little bit longer. Despite all efforts, however, he slowly began to come to. He burrowed a little deeper into the big, warm blanket surrounding him and leaned a little bit closer to the source of heat at his back. For a moment he thought he was back in his room in the manor. Then he thought maybe there had never been a manor and he on his pull out couch in the Grayson trailer. Maybe it had all just been a dream. He parent's weren't dead, he was nine years old and a world class acrobat. The Batman was a far-off story from a city he would pass through one day and then leave and Mr. Wayne was an even more distant figure. A name without a face. Yes, that had all been a dream. In a few minutes his father would come wake him up and his mother would be standing by the stove, cooking eggs and pancakes for breakfast.

Dick smiled at the thought and pulled the blanket tighter still around him. He took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet scent of... Rosemary!

Dick's eyes shot open, fully alert. The trailer had many strange smells in it, from cinnamon to sweat, but his mother was allergic to rosemary. And the manor always smelled of dust or dust cleaner, unless he'd left his gym close out for too long. Dick quickly tried to take account of his surroundings, to figure out what the _heck_ had happened to him, without alerting anyone who might be in the room. He stilled his breathing until it would appear to onlookers as a normal, slumbering breath. He let his eyes fall mostly closed and opened his other senses.

The blanket around him was large and warm, but it had that scent of rosemary and the unmistakable smell of long-use. He was lying on an old, musty couch with thick, soft cushions. A small fire crackled merrily beside him, almost like it was purposefully mocking him with its false comfort. He was facing the back of the couch and couldn't see much of the room, but he didn't hear anyone else in the room and his 'Bat-senses,' as Wally called them, didn't alert them to anyone else around. His mask was still on -thank every deity that ever lived- but the rest of his uniform seemed to have disappeared. He was shirtless and he didn't recognize the feel of the loose sweat pants he was wearing. At least it didn't feel like he was injured in anyway. He could see the gray melancholy light cast by a cloudy sky filtering in from a window on the far side of the room, but the rain seemed to have stopped.

The rain! The pain. He remembered! They were fighting some two-bit bad guy with a weather machine up in the stratosphere. He recalled battling some guards, needing to hack something on the outside of the giant ship. Getting jumped and then...

He swallowed hard as he recalled the feeling of plummeting down through the storm clouds. The terror of simply falling would have been bad enough. But through a thunder storm? He shuddered. He couldn't see, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't even hear anything but the thunder crashing. If he hadn't pulled his cape out at the last minute, allowing it to catch the buffeting winds and slow his descent, he would have... Another shudder. As it was his landing had been terrible, after the rain soaked his cape and uniform and made him too heavy to fly he'd fallen straight down. At least he'd been out of the thunderstorm by then. But Batman was still going to have his head for-

He jumped. Batman! His team! They would all be so worried. He had no way of knowing how exactly how long he had been out, but he already knew it was too long to go without checking in.

"Good morning, Jack."

He threw the blanket off and immediately crouched into a defensive position, fighting off a wave of dizzyness as all the blood flowed from his brain to the rest of his extremities, bones creaking a little in protest at the sudden movement. He tried to recall the last time he'd stretched.

None of this phased the girl in front of him. She entered the small room (a living room, he noticed, old and slightly dilapidated) through a door on the other side of the couch. Exactly where he wouldn't have been able to see her. She wore a thin, blue summer dress, even though it was late fall. Black snow boots, however, covered her feet and most of her calves. Her body was long and willowy. Her dark hair fell in wispy waves and streams down over her shoulders. Her head was cocked slightly to the right, staring at him with palest, strangest blue eyes he had ever seen. She seemed... vacant was the right word. Like he was looking at a picture of a girl painted on glass while the rest of her was a thousand miles away. A body frozen while the mind drifted beyond its normal confines.

He stayed crouched, not letting his guard down again. "How did I get here?" he demanded.

She ignored him and moved closer, he backed up, very aware of his proximity to the fire. She paused and said in an dreamy sort of voice. "You fell."

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I know. Where am I?" he persisted.

Still, she ignored his question. "Why do you ask questions if you know the answer?"

"What?" he asked, hoping he sounded fierce. "Just tell me why I'm here already."

"I said that you fell and you said 'I know'." she explained in a vaguely disinterested sort of way. "Why did you ask then?"

"I know that I fell." he insisted, body slowly coming out of its defensive position as he slowly began to wonder if this girl even had the ability to attack someone. "I don't know how I got here. Where ever _here_ is."

"You went up the hill." she said like it was obvious. Her tone had changed, she looked straight at him and her eyes were a bit clearer. A bit more understanding. "To fetch a pail of water. You fell down."

He stared at her, utterly bewildered as she smoothly jumped over the back of the couch and landed on the blanket he had previously been under, stretching her legs and pointing her toes towards the fire. She glanced up at him briefly and said in the tone of a comforting mother trying to reassure her son, "I fixed your crown, though."

He shook his head and resigned himself to having to piece together the rantings of yet another nut job before he could get any answers. "And what, exactly it that?" he asked sarcastically, mostly out of spite and annoyance, not really expecting an answer.

She reached out and grabbed hold of his bare hand so quickly she was turning over his palm before he even registered the movement. He was on alert again. She was dangerous. He didn't attempt to pull away, however, unsure of her reaction. "This." she replied, apparently not noticing his discomfort.

She gently ran her hand over his bruised knuckles, the touch so feather light he almost didn't feel it. His hands were always bruised, whether from landing on them or punching someone, or getting punched by someone, he always had bruises on them. Then, she wrapped both her hands around his slim fingers and a warm, tingly feeling enveloped the small appendage. He gasped without meaning too, recalling the feeling suddenly. He forced himself not to close his eyes and try to spread the feeling to the rest of him. He forced himself to watch her carefully. Her eyes were hazy again, staring blankly at their joined hands as if she didn't see them at all. Her mouth hung open a bit, like she was in wonder of her own power. Then some of the consciousness returned to her face and she pulled her hands away, taking the warmth with them. He resisted the compulsion to grab for them and try to hold onto the feeling.

Instead he looked down at the hand and inspected it. To his surprise the bruising was gone, like it had never been. He carefully flexed the hand, making a tight fist and slowly opening it and then closing it again. Suddenly it all clicked. This is why he was uninjured. A fall like that should have killed him. She had been there and cleaned up the pieces. The Dick Grayson side of him was grateful. The Batman and Robin side of him was suspicious. What did she want with him now?

He asked her in one word. "Why?" And she cocked her head at him again. For whatever reason he knew she understood what he meant. She shrugged and didn't speak so he tried something else. "Did you see me fall? Is that how you knew I needed help?"

She shook her head, long hair flying in all direction, "I just knew."

"Knew what?" he asked, trying to clarify, "That I was hurt? That I'd be there? Do you see the future?"

Another head shake. "I know things. It's not the future. It just is."

He sighed and decided he would not get anything from her. If he could get out, he and Batman could dig up her back story. "What's your name?" he finally asked.

"Sometimes." she replied. That was all. Robin just rolled his eyes this time.

"Fine," he said, deciding to play her game. "If I'm Jack, who are you?"

"Are you Jack?"

"Excuse me?"

"Would you jump over a candle stick?"

Robin let out a huff of anger and forced himself not to punch the wall. _"You _said I was- You know what? Never mind. Can I _go_?"

She raised a slender eyebrow at him. "If you want to. They have the caged birds, not me."

Her straight forward, albeit strange, response caught him slightly off guard. "Who's they?" he asked suspiciously,

"Are you coming or going?"she asked instead of answering, "I have to make the right number of tea pots. Why _is_ a raven like a writing desk?"

He did punch a wall this time. "Good lord! Did you forget take your medicine today or what?"

She froze and then seemed to collapse in on herself. Her eyes became farther away than ever, but full of... fear. Robin didn't know what was going on, but he couldn't help feeling guilty. However crazy she may be, she had saved his life. Suddenly she started to mumble and rub her hands up and down her arms, as if she was cold. "Take your medicine." she babbled, barely coherent, "It'll make you grow up strong. No. That's milk. Do the cows mind? Jack had a cow. And a bean... And Jill. Jack and Jill- Jack and Jill-"

Finally Robin couldn't take it anymore. He didn't know what was going on, but_ he_ had started it and she looked so helpless. He grabbed her shoulders and shouted something, anything, to get to her attention. She immediately froze and stared him in the eyes, a look of fear and sadness there so deep and cold it almost made him look away. But he'd stared down the Batman, one girl would not make him blink. She began talking again, but her eyes were sharp and nearly lucid, her voice piercing and... frightening. Every word she said sent shivers down his spine, contrasting frightfully with the temperature of the air around them. The words were like ice, piercing his skin but never breaking it. "They come at night. They come with Fright. Fly, little bird. They have the cages all prepared. Just waiting for a flock. The cages are pretty, yes. They cages are tempting. But do you know how the biggest fish in the river got that way?" she asked, and he could only shake his head, stunned and inexplicably terrified. "By. Not. Getting. Caught."

He looked deep into her eyes and he saw something there. Something true. Something terrifying.

He ran.

He dashed through the door she had appeared from. It led to a small bedroom. In the center of the bed lay his uniform. Still damp from the night before. He grabbed it without a second thought and immediately reached for his computer. A quick glance back through the doorway revealed that the girl hadn't moved an inch, still staring into the air where he used to be. He didn't hesitate. He leaped through the open window of the bedroom rather than look her in the eye again.

The cold autumn air hit his exposed skin like a thousand little needles, making him realize just how warm it had been inside. He didn't bother trying to get his bearings, he simply picked a direction -east, towards Gotham, an unconscious decision- and began running, already trying to communicate with his team, Batman, the League, anyone who could put as much distance between him and the girl with pale, frightening eyes as possible.

Because it wasn't just the cold word, pale and frightening as her eyes that scared. It wasn't the way her voice had made him feel. It wasn't the fact that someone who could predict the future and heal fatal wounds was so scared of... what ever she saw coming. It was the fact that when he looked her in the eye, he finally understood what she hadn't been able to say. All of the fears trapped inside her head were not her own. They were his.

He just hadn't felt them yet.

BBear- I have no idea where this is going. It's like the idea of an idea right now. It may just stay like this. If it doesn't I promise it won't be one of those "girl joines YJ and falls in love but her dark past keeps her mysterious! (ect, ect)". I'm just not sure where to take this... Let me know if you have any ideas/any interest in this story... type... _thing_ at all. I figured I'd post it even though I don't know what it is because I've gotten some really good feedback from the YJ fandom and I was kinda hoping you guys would help me find some inspiration.


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